Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Tool #10

Being a part of this digital age, we must teach our students about being a good digital citizen. I want my students to be able to access a website and decide for themselves if it is a good source of information or not. They also need to understand that some websites have good information, but are not appropriate as a source for educational use. Students need to be aware that anything they post on the internet is available to the world forever. Even if they delete it, someone could have saved the picture, video, or post and the websites still have access to old posts. Our students need to be careful what and where they post things. Students also need to know that plagiarism applies to the internet just like it does on a paper. If you copy something that belongs to someone else or someone else created, it is plagiarism.

One of the websites that looked helpful and interesting was called Digizen. This website had videos and information separated into appropriate audiences (teacher, parent, student). These videos can be used to introduce/discuss different digital citizenship topics.

Whenever we do an activity with the internet, computers, and ipads, I will share with my students how I searched and found the website, answer, or video. We need to have the same understanding of search engines and evaluating websites. If we share with our students what we have learned and how we learned it, that would be more powerful than handing them the information and have them "find" the already given website.

Most of the parents of my students do not even have an email address which means they are probably not digitally aware. Sending a letter home (with a mandatory signature) explaining what is happening in the classroom with technology is the most effective way to share information with parents.